Yesterday was InnovationCamp in Austin. Based on the concept of BarCamp, it was an ad hoc gathering of people who want to learn about innovation by doing rather than listening.

I thought it was more successful than almost all of the BarCamps I’ve been to because they were able to attract a very diverse group of people with a lot of interesting ideas. BarCamps are typically very tech heavy, with most of the people talking about social media and the web. It has an echo chamber feel, where most everyone already knows what the speaker is talking about, and we’ve had all these discussions many times. There’s not many new ideas that come out of BarCamps simply because all the same people go to them (new ideas come from interactions with new people).

InnovationCamp did a lot of “old media” advertising and promotion of this event, and it turned out great. I gave a talk (along with 3 other members of The Creative Space) on “Alternative Work Environments” - the coworking idea, and what we’ve learned after having our coworking space for a year.